"Yes, Master," she said.
I held her head in my hands. I kissed her about the throat.
"Please take me, Master," she begged.
"With mercy?" I asked her.
"No," she whispered, "without mercy."
"How incredible was that experience," she said.
"There are many ways to take a woman," I told her, "even many ways to take her without mercy."
"Perhaps it is only the free who permit themselves to be imprisoned by routine," she said.
"Perhaps," I said. "I would not know." I kissed her, gently. "Sleep now," I said. "It is nearly light."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"It is light, Master," she said, softly.
I awakened. I rolled over and lifted myself on one elbow. I regarded her in the glistening, moist jungle dawn. She was lying beside me, the tether on her throat, her hands tied behind her back.
"We must soon be on our way," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. I saw that she was very beautiful. Yesterday she had been a woman who had been enslaved. This morning she was a slave.
"Master?" she asked.
I took her ankles and threw them apart.
"Yes, my master," she whispered.
Later I stood over her, and looked down upon her. She looked up at me. "I love you, Master," she said.
"You will doubtless be bought and sold many times, Slave," I said, "and will have many masters."
"I will try to love my masters," she said.
"That would be wise on your part," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she smiled. I looked down upon her. Perhaps someday she would find her love master, he to whom she would be the perfect love slave. Sometimes such individuals know one another immediately, sometimes not. Sometimes a man simply sees a naked woman in her chains upon the block and knows suddenly that she is the perfect one, she who is destined to be the perfect love slave for whom he ha. always sought. Sometimes a girl, kneeling before a new master, is seized by a sudden wild emotion. Perhaps it is something in the way his steel is locked upon her body; perhaps it is something in the audacity and assurance with which he handles her. She lifts her head, meeting his eyes. Quickly she puts her head down, trembling. She knows then she has met one who may well be her love master, one to whom she can be but the most helpless of love slaves. I looked down at the girl, lying at my feet. Perhaps someday, I mused, she would find her perfect love master, he to whom she would be the perfect love slave. Until then let her be bought and sold, and passed from hand to hand, subject to exchanges, and vendings and barterings; let her know the joys and miseries of diverse bondages; it did not matter, for she was only a slave.
I kicked her with the side of my foot. "On your feet," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I let her stand there, tethered and bound, and naked, while I ate some of the roast tarsk. I brushed black ants from it. I then removed the one end of the tether from the slave stake and drew her to the tarsk. "Kneel and feed," I told her. She knelt and, putting down her head, bit at the tarsk. After a time I pulled her away from it and, again using the tether as a leash, led her to a fan palm. I tied the tether to the fan palm. "Drink," I told her. "Yes, Master," she said. While she quenched her thirst, and then knelt beside the fan palm, I destroyed the signs of our encampment. I even, slowly, painfully, drew up the slave stake and discarded it in some growth. It need not reveal that a slave, or slaves, had been tethered here. I then tied the pieces of roast tarsk together, in a heavy ring of meat. Then, fetching the lovely slave, my pretty beast of burden, I stood her in the clearing. I untied her hands and removed the tether from her throat. I threw her the bit of bark cloth for her hips. "Dress," I told her. "Yes, Master," she smiled. She wound the bit of cloth about her hips, and tucked it in. She then thrust it down further, well over her hips, that the loveliness of the slave belly be well revealed.
"Do I meet with the approval of my master?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
She posed before me, smiling. "The morning garb," she said, "of the well dressed slave girl."
"Often," said I, "slave girls are kept naked, save for their collar and brand."
"Ah," she said, "and I do not even have a collar. How deprived I am! But I am wearing my brand."
"You cannot take it off," I said.
"That is true," she smiled.
"It marks you well," I said.
She drew up the bark skirt. "Yes," she said, "it does."
"How did you get it?" I asked.
"Some cruel brute burned it into my flesh with a hot iron," she said.
"I recall," I said.
"I love my brand," she said.
"Most girls do," I said.
"It makes me prettier, doesn't it, as well as marking me as what I am, a slave?"
"Yes," I said, "a brand makes a woman a thousand times more beautiful. It is not just the aesthetic loveliness of the mark, of course, though that in itself incredibly enhances a woman's beauty; it is, of course, even more, its meaning."
"I understand, Master," she said.
"What is its meaning?" I asked.
"It means that I am a slave," she said.
"Yes," I said. "one of the most helpless, beautiful, exciting and desirable of women, she who is owned, she who is at the complete mercy of the master, she who must well serve and obey in all things."
She entered my arms and melted to me.
"We must be on our way," I told her. Then I lowered her to the ground.
"You're going to rape me, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
I threw the ring of tarsk meat about her neck, over her shoulders. She stumbled a bit under the weight. Then she straightened herself.
"I know why most slave girls do not desire to escape their masters," she said.
"Why? I asked.
"Because we love them, and desire to please them," she said.
I turned her about, and thrust her in the direction of our main camp, where Kisu and the others awaited us.
I followed her.
I carried the long leather strap, that which had served as her tether, looped in my hand.
I looked up at the sun. We must hurry.
"Har-ta, Kajira!" I said. "Faster, Slave Girl!" I struck her with the straps, a sharp blow, that she might understand that she was not to daily.
"Yes, Master," she said.
35
The Squabbles Of Slaves
"Please do not tie me, tonight, Master," begged Tende.
"Be silent," said Kisu. He then threw her on her stomach and tied her hands behind her back and crossed her ankles and bound them. By a leather thong looped about her right forearm he fastened her to a small tree a few feet from our fire.
It had been a week since we had first, on the height of the falls, seen the flotilla of Bila Huruma pasangs behind us.
"Have you forgotten to tie me tonight, Master?" asked Janice.
"Yes, I have forgotten," I said.
"You forgot last night, too," she said.
"That is true," I said.
"Aren't you going to tie me?" she asked.
"No," I said. "Run away, if you dare."
"I neither dare to, nor do I wish to," she said.
"Lie here," I said.
She lay where I had indicated, her head at my thigh. She snuggled closely to me.
"Janice," whispered Tende.
Janice left my side to crawl to Tende. Tende had struggled to a sitting position. Janice knelt while Tende sat, for Tende was first girl. "Mistress?" asked Janice.
"May I speak with you?" asked Tende.
"Of course, Mistress," said Janice.
Tende then struggled to her knees. I knew then she wished to speak of her master.
"How can I please Kisu more?" she asked Janice.
"Do you feel, deep in your heart; that you are a slave?" asked Janice.
"Yes," said Tende, "in the most profound depths of my heart I feel that I am a slave."